The Depression Era Photography of Dorothea Lange

Upper: A large sign reads ‘I am American’ outside a store at 13th and Franklin, San Francisco.  This was taken five months after the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor and was a response to the knee jerk response of many Americans to the presence of people of Japanese descent in their midst.  The store was closed and its owner, a Berkeley graduate was interned away from the west coast for the duration of the war.

Lower: Lange’s images of the internment of Japanese Americans were considered so provocative that the army impounded them until the end of the war.  Here, two children await evacuation by bus. The sandwich one is holding is a gift from a woman from a local church

Pictures: Dorothea Lange.

via lickystickypickyme

I think few Americans are aware of the scope of the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. I have a friend who works at a Oregon Nikkei Japanese cultural center in Portland, which is located in what used to be the Japan-Town district of Portland, home to thousands of Americans of Japanese descent. But after the internment, none of them returned, and most of the rich culture of that neighborhood is lost forever.